The control of pain is at present primarily through the use of opioid-like analgetics, such as morphine, fentanyl, pentazocine, etc., or through non-steroidal antiinflammatories. There are limitations to the usefulness of such agents, and other classes of analgetics for the control and amelioration of pain are needed. A trace alkaloid epibatidine from skins of a neotropical frog is two-hundred fold more potent than morphine administered subcutaneously to mice in a standard analgetic test. In addition the analgesia elicited by epibatidine is not antagonized by the opioid antagonist naloxone, indicating that the analgesia is not due to actions of epibatidine at opioid receptors. In support of this conclusion is the very low affinity of epibatidine for dihydromorphine binding sites in rodent brain membranes. Epibatidine at higher doses causes a marked Straub-tail response, as does morphine, an effect linked to activation of dopamine pathways in the spinal cord. However, the Straub-tail response to epibatidine, unlike the Straub tail response to morphine, is not blocked by the opioid-antagonist naloxone.